For interested parties, the audio for the podcast demo can be downloaded here
Voiceover audio was self-recorded (apologies, I’m not much of a news anchor) on a Shure SM7B microphone in Adobe Audition
Cleaned up the audio in Izotope RX using a combination of De-noise, De-mouth click, De-plosive to get a clean audio signal, and De-Reverb to bring the audio to the front of the mix
Brought the cleaned up audio from Izotope RX into Ableton Live 12, and processed it with a sequence of the following plugins to bring consistency and clarity across listening devices:
Pro-Q3 - initial EQ
Soothe2 & RX De-ess - for de-ess on harsh sibilances, fairly significant processing as they can cause real problems on mobile device speakers
FabFilter Saturn - gentle overall saturation for warmth
Fresh Air - brings vocal air to the audio, makes it less dull
FabFilter Pro-C2 - compression; subtle taming of peaks to get consistent audio without killing vocal dynamics
FabFilter Pro-L2 - catch peaks, monitor LUFS, True Peak Limit to -1 ceiling and -16LUFS integrated for standardized podcast audio
Added background music and designed sfx for transitions and added points of interest